Garlic - progress report

So, my youngest took a dislike to one of my garlic plants today... since he pretty much broke the stem off (and I've got plenty) I thought I might just dig it up and see what's doing.

It basically looks just like a spring onion, with a purplish end but nothing really ressembling a bulb... I realise that's basically green garlic (smells nice and probably quite tasty!) but I'm now worried. Shouldn't my garlic (planted in November) be a bit further along by now? Or is it only in the last month or so that the bulbs form?

Simple answer is no, it's unlikely to be any further on than when it was planted other than having developed a root system under ground. Garlic will grow when the weather starts to warm up. If it's got healthy looking top growth then it should be fine.

Garlic needs to experience at least 30 days of frost so the bulb will split into cloves hence the reason garlic is planted in October/November time or then February time.

The bulbs will gradually form and split, and unless we have a very dry season they should be ok, if it is dry then watering towards the last few weeks of harvest is recommended but they may start to bolt, which means the garlic starts to form a flower head, these need to be cut off to stop the plant producing seeds, it then concentrates on bulking out the bulb.

It could of course be the type of garlic that you are sowing Bf206. This year I bought 4 different types from The Garlic Farm which I sowed in pots in the greenhouse in October (I think). I have Albigensian Wight, Early Purple Wight, Iberia Wight and Solent Wight. Although they were all treated exactly the same, the Solent Wight was far more scrawny than the other 3, and still is after a couple of months in the ground.

If you have used cloves from the supermarket, they may not be suited to our climate and will struggle to perform really well. I otherwise agree with Zoomer that it is still far too early to tell.

I'd be interested in knowing what variety it was BF206, or if it was from a supermarket.

I bought some strange garlic from the supermarket. It had a very thick skin round each clove, and this thick skin smelled terrible i.e. normal garlic x 10 (especially when cooked, when you woudl expect it to smell sweeter). Would this have been in a state not normally seen in supermarkets, or an unusual type of garlic?

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